


Between the Seconds

by Kylenne



Series: Kinktober 2020 [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst and Porn, Background Relationships, Black Female Character, F/M, Gisele Surana (OC), Kinktober 2020, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Polyamory, Size Difference, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26819458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylenne/pseuds/Kylenne
Summary: High above Ala Mhigo, the hunter becomes the hunted, and nothing shall ever be the same.
Relationships: Zenos yae Galvus/Warrior of Light
Series: Kinktober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948408
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Between the Seconds

All who knew of the Echo knew that those marked by it shared certain preternatural abilities: the power to walk within the memories of another, and complete protection against the omnipotent influence of Primals. But it was also a peculiar quality of the Echo, long noted by Sharlayan’s sages, that this eldritch and mysterious gift manifested uniquely in each of its bearers, even beyond these two well-known powers.

For Gisele Surana, her unique Echo talents were twofold. One, that she was a heartseer, attuned to the vibrations of souls in a profound manner of spiritual empathy. Two, that the manner by which she perceived the tremendous aetheric energy of a Primal was quite unlike any recorded in history, by the aetherochemical geniuses of ancient Allag, or the scholars of Sharlayan; for Gisele, they were song.

She fought the Lord of Crags and heard the pulsing drumbeat of the land, pounding a dark and implacable rhythm; from Garuda, she heard a piercing, discordant cry carried upon harsh and unforgiving winds. At first, it proved jarring, but in time had she embraced this strange manifestation of her gift, and even fought to their rhythms, using them to her advantage...and in doing so, she remembered each of these titanic struggles in ways none could comprehend.

Thus, as Gisele stood amidst the fragrant blossoms of the Royal Menagerie of Ala Mhigo, face to face with its fallen viceroy—this foul prince who would drown two continents in blood to slake a thirst that would never be sated—she heard a Song. It was muffled, shackled, a muted rhythm akin to a distant raging storm, little more than hollow din against which Zenos made his declarations of madness, seeking to draw her into his endless and senseless Hunt.

She strained to hear it, to mark its nature; her foe smiled, and Shinryu was at last loosed in all its power…while Zenos yae Galvus, unholy crimson eyes burning with madness and delight by turns, rose up to meet it, and was subsumed within.

Discordant fury was what she expected to hear of a surety, birthed as the monstrosity was of traitorous Ilberd’s burning hatred and decades of festering resentments, fueled by the lingering rage of Nidhogg; perhaps that was what she heard low and shackled by Garlean device some moments prior. But somewhat changed in the creature, when Zenos ascended to seize control of it through his stolen power, what Gisele believed merely a hollow mockery of the Echo. When hulking Garlean met Primal wyrm, and became something altogether more... _it_ changed, as surely as the Primal.

Their Song changed.

Gisele had faced a slew of Primals over these short years as Eorzea’s storied Warrior of Light, and a Scion of the Seventh Dawn; gods of beasts and men, scions of myth and legend carrying the hopes and dreams of diverse and oft desperate peoples. From Ifrit to Leviathan, King Thordan and his Knights of the Round, to Susano, kami of storms, to Sri Lakshmi, beloved of the Ananta, Gisele had, deep inside her consciousness, heard a myriad of songs, dark and transcendent, paeans of ethereal power, loss, despair...all of them had touched her soul, each one.

Yet none of these could behold the sublime majesty of Shinryu’s song.

Gisele traced the thread of it to the skies as Shinryu sailed ever higher, beckoning her to the dance; she raced across the bridge high above the palace, the hilt of her rapier held tight in her grip, but in an enormous gust of wind, the wyrm’s massive tail shattered the stone as though it were mere glass, sending enormous chunks of rubble hurtling toward the earth far below, and Gisele darted away from the suddenly jagged edge as quickly as she could.

She steadied herself, planting first her feet upon then stone, then her crystalline focus upon the hilt of her rapier, drawing upon her stores of aether.

_**-the heavens are too small a field for our dance, o sorceress of the grey. let us transcend this mortal coil!-**_

Gisele was glad for it then, the paling of the Echo, for Zenos’ voice would have shattered her mind without it; this she knew in her bones, as they quivered beneath the weight of it, suffocating beneath darkest velvet. She loosed only a single jolt of aetheric power in shades of brilliant, sanguine rose, before Shinryu rose up, and his massive, leathery wings blotted out the very sun. He sailed higher and ever higher upon those wings, and it was then she finally beheld the enormity of the Primal’s form. 

All the while, that glorious Song echoed through Gisele’s mind, rising to a triumphant crescendo, beckoning her onward and upward. On impulse, she dove head first from the crumbling stone without fear, without hesitation or doubt; for she knew that he would not permit her to fall, not like this. She plunged toward his tail, and grabbed it as she threatened to plummet past it, hurling herself up with all her might until she straddled it tightly, holding on for all she was worth.

Higher and higher Shinryu flew until Gisele felt her lungs tightening, her breath coming shorter, and at last espied what she could only call the Veil parting before her burning eyes. She realized then that they had sailed through a portal the wyrm had opened, to a field beyond mortal ken; for a moment, she wanted to laugh ruefully, as it reminded her of nothing but the Fade, with a dark and unnatural sky in eerie virescent shades and what seemed yalm upon yalm of emptiness as far as the eye could see.

She loosed her grip to land upon the one patch of solid ground in that vast nothingness, and raised her gaze to meet that of the greatest foe she had ever faced, in two worlds entire. When Shinryu lowered to meet it, twas the eyes of Zenos which stared back at her, even within that divine shell.

_**-this day we shall write a new legend, my friend! this battle shall echo in eternity!-**_

And the dance began in earnest. Unfettered, unchained, they both were—not merely Shinryu. Anchored by the grace of her Light-blessed Mother, Gisele reached deep within, breathing deeply of odorless air, to find the steel which lay behind the crimson silk. With blade and spell, she drew upon the stores of aether within and without, whirling like a dervish away from the meteors he rained down upon the field, ducking beneath a massive swipe of his spiked tail, before turning to shoot twisting coils of lightning with a sweep of her blade. Again and again, he rained destruction upon her; again and again, she twisted and turned her body, diving, sailing, tumbling with effortless Elezen grace, and responded in kind.

It had always been thus, facing Zenos, had it not? For each time they crossed blades, the Garlean warrior-prince had pushed her to her limits and beyond. Each time, he had forced her to go deeper and deeper within herself, to be stronger, faster, more clever. Each time, she had bent, yet not broken, tempered in the heat of struggle, swaying as the willow against the might of his storm but never uprooted by its fury.

Now, it was a thousandfold; now, he wielded the divine might of a Primal with exquisite ferocity, and the vision of the Echo—even were it stolen. All that she had ever faced, he threw against her; all that she had ever learned, she brought to bear in response. Drowning in corrupted aether, he propelled an enormous wave down upon her, and she braced herself as Sidurgu taught her, with the shadowy greatsword willed into her hand and angled protectively across her body; the crashing water parted before her blade. The rage of the Shadow within filled her then, fueled by the cry of lost souls which filled her heart to bursting, and she swept the massive blade before her in a flurry of blows, wielding the sorrow of Ala Mhigo and Doma by turns against their great tormentor. The ground shook violently beneath her feet, and she flailed a moment to regain her footing, before virtually shouting the familiar incantation, needing neither grimoire nor codex as the equation was seared into memory, and she steadied herself beneath a glittering dome of light.

Of a surety, every Primal she had ever faced, he had plucked from her memory as a vintner at harvest upon the vine and cast their power against hers: the infernal heat of Ifrit singed the hem of her skirts, lance upon lance of sharp and glittering ice flew to pierce her defenses.

Even Urthemiel, by the Creators! For the small hairs upon the back of her neck stood on end at the sound of an all too familiar shrieking cry piercing the unnatural air, and in its wake did shadowy figures rise from the ground, surrounding her, clawing at her, drawn to Shinryu’s Song as surely as they once were lured by that of the accursed Archdemon. But Gisele closed her eyes in peaceful repose, drawing the blessed staff within her hands, bathed in the Light of Hydaelyn’s glory, and spun gracefully in the air, unleashing a burst of dazzling radiance to engulf the darkspawn clamoring before her; they crumbled to ash, blasted to nothingness.

All the while, all through this titanic struggle, that Song was ever present—his Song. And as she fought to its driving, staccato rhythms, she heard naught of bloodlust, nor cruelty, nor even anger. No, it was not anger this, but…joy. Pure, transcendent, and everlasting, ringing in her ears, raising gooseflesh along her silk-sheathed arms, vibrating deep in her pounding chest, sung to the deepest part of her soul, a divine chorus layered in complex harmony, a paean to glory. And at the root of it all, at the heart of it all lay not the hubris of Thordan, nor the violent barbarity of Ravana, nor the wanton carnality of Lakshmi.

It was love.

There was no doubt, as their struggle carried on; Gisele heard love in that Song. She could not name it anything else, not this woman for whom such passion was the star by which she fixed her very life. She could deny it in Ala Mhigo’s throne room, when Zenos spoke of the dark pleasures of his accursed Hunt and his voice was nigh choked with lust. She could even deny it standing amidst those fragrant blossoms of the Menagerie; then it was truly a simple thing to do, when she stared upon crimson eyes filled with naught but madness, and found little but chaos.

Now, all else was stripped away; now his aether was joined to a Primal’s, and Gisele _heard it sing_.

It sang of glory, it sang of incalculable longing, and unfathomable desire yes…but it sang of love. Love, eternal, and transcendent, was the base note upon which this complex harmony was rooted, from which all else flowed.

And that harmony built and built, driving onward toward a mighty crescendo, driving _her_ onward, driving them both ever onward. Lightning danced along Gisele’s arms and shot from her fingertips, and she saw her breath forming tiny shimmering crystals in the chill before her. Ethereal wings engulfed her, a fey wind filled her senses with warmth and succor, the very stars danced within her grasp and exploded in a shimmering burst. Never had she wielded such power; it was beyond her limits, and swept along the ecstatic euphoria of that glorious Song, she felt it in every fiber of her being, surging in her very blood.

_**-do you understand now, my friend?-**_

Gisele laughed deliriously, tears pouring from her eyes. “Do _you_ , mon veneur?” she cried out, slipping into her mother tongue as she so often did; anything else was quite inadequate for this. “You do not even know yourself!”

_**-i know that we were meant for this.-**_

“You could be more! We could be so much more. So much more,” Gisele said.

_**-what lies beyond such transcendency? what could surpass this dance of wills? i see you, o sorceress of the grey, o warrior of light. i know who you are beneath the moonlight, in the darkness you so claim to abhor. you are not prey, my friend; you are a hunter such as i-**_

“And I know who _you_ are, Zenos yae Galvus: a man slumbering as in a fable, who has dreamed so long he yearns to wake, but at last opens his eyes and does not know he no longer dreams!”

Zenos’ voice purred through her mind and she felt that Song grow softer, softer, the driving rhythm fading until naught but the light and airy melody remained to pierce her heart, wrapping itself about her soul.

_**-only from another world could i have found such a one as you.-**_

And so moved the beauty of that Song, so frustrated at the senselessness of this all, did Gisele’s voice choke with sorrow. “ _Why must you do this?_ ” she screamed, her voice cracking beneath the weight of her shattering heart, “ _why,_ Zenos?”

_**-mine friend, mine enemy...this is how it would always end! this is what it must be!-**_

“Because you have known nothing else!” Gisele cried, as the splendor of his yearning washed over her, filling her very soul. “But I can show you, Zenos! _I can show you!_ ”

But one moment she lowered her guard, caught up in that Song, in the flood of emotion which threatened to drown her as surely as Leviathan’s wake; and in that moment, Shinryu’s tail swept across the barren field, knocking her flying to ground, and stealing the very breath from her.

Gisele’s vision swam before her eyes as she struggled for air, disoriented. How much longer could she do this? For all the heights to which he had driven her, she was still mortal; still flesh and blood. Still panting, she leaned upon the hilt of her blade. And then, seemingly by chance, she espied a gash within the ground, like as not a scar of some titanic blow or another she had dodged. But she was suddenly reminded of words spoken a lifetime ago, when her gaze fell upon it.

_I want a line in the sand, that I can clearly defend._

Loghain had told her that once, when she asked him what it was he truly wanted. And his words stayed with her, far longer than she would have believed. For she drew one of her own back then, in Denerim, high atop the parapets of Fort Drakon, when she gave her life for him.

As she drew one once more, in the depths of the Praetorium.

And again, upon the Steps of Faith—twice.

Now, she would draw another high above Ala Mhigo, in a place yet beyond the heavens, stirred by the memory of a man she barely had time to know, much less love. Yet love him she did, and with all her heart, and she no longer wept when she saw his face in her memory; now, she remembered the fleeting joy they shared even in the darkness. She clung to the memory of it, and Alistair, and Leliana, Zevran…all whom she ever loved in that distant world. They remained with her still, and always would. So too did those she cherished in Eorzea—and Doma, too: her flame in the abyss, burning bright and everlasting, to guide her blade and animate her incantations.

Gisele was not alone in her struggle. She was never alone, and this she understood at last.

She held them all in her thoughts, against the power of that Song, and rose slowly to her feet. And with every burst of flame, every gust of wind, every flurry of aetheric petals, their memory steeled her, driving her onward. The Song was faltering, slowly but surely. 

In a final, furious burst of blinding speed she soared through that eldritch sky beyond the heavens, one small Elezen hurled against the might of a colossus of leathery flesh and nigh bottomless aether. Yet soared she did, without fear or trembling, for she soared upon the wings of those who bore her thus far: mentors and comrades and a veritable constellation of lovers. Filled with the light of their grace, she set a blazing path with her gilded sandals along Shinryu’s sinuous spine, unleashing a flurry of aether-empowered slashes and piercing thrusts, until at last her rapier, all aflame, plunged through the heart of the wyrm. He reared back in pain and ecstasy by turns, and reached up with a faltering claw to swipe her away, but she was fast, too fast; with a deft plant of her foot upon his maw, she arched backward, tumbling away end over end, through a burst of Light which she set to engulfing him.

And then Shinryu was no more, fading into dimming embers with the remnants of his Song.

* * *

As a shooting star did he plunge down through russet skies still glittering with spent aether, landing upon a bed of flowers in an explosion of colorful petals and grasses. No longer transcendent, nor clad in Primal flesh was he; rather, once more sheathed in steel most mortal, tempered in the punishing heat of a Garlean forge, and he lay in stillness for an interminable moment.

Gisele went to him without thinking, but he swept her proffered arm aside with an oddly gentle firmness, instead reaching for one of his katana, which had fallen beside him. He coughed as he slowly pulled himself up, staggering forward, leaning upon the blade for support, and it was blood which trickled from his mouth, streaming a rivulet of bright red down his chin.

“Did you feel it?” Zenos asked her, his eyes alight with wonder, his arms spread wide. He lifted his face toward the heavens, as though he yearned to gaze back to that place Beyond, and shut his eyes with a blissful smile upon his generous lips.

It did not strike her as a strange thing to ask, however, for Gisele nodded in the deepest understanding, her hand raised up to grasp the pendant at her heart. 

“I did. And I do.”

“This feeling…so transcendent. Such joy…I have never known. My heart soars as it never has.”

“It is love,” she said, with a sad smile.

Zenos blinked slowly. “Is this what it feels like?”

“Yes.” 

He laughed suddenly, and for the first time, Gisele heard genuine mirth in it. “I knew you were a wolf in lamb’s clothing. Truly…truly, the hunter has become the prey this night. I thank you, Gisele.”

“You do not even know what for.”

Zenos lowered to his knees before her, drawing her hand into his; rather comically, it only made the hulking Garlean closer to her own height. And so kneeling before her, he pressed his lips against the signet upon her ring finger, the ever present scarlet unicorn of House Fortemps. “I need not know it to feel it,” he whispered. “I _feel_. That, my queen of hunters, is enough.”

Gisele’s heart skipped a beat, and she cursed the gooseflesh rising along her sweat soaked skin with the sensation of his hot breath caressing her knuckles with every word. Her blood was racing in her veins, pulse beating in her ears. For a moment, a single moment like unto their titanic struggle beyond the heavens, the world was naught but the two of them; for a moment, Gisele wished he would pull her down upon that bed of fragrant blossoms and ravish her. And for the first time, she felt no shame for such thoughts. His beauty no longer tortured her, not now that she knew what truly lie within his soul. 

But she knew then that this—that _Zenos_ —would haunt her for the rest of her life, and she needed no Echo for such a manner of foresight, only the searing memory of that Song and all that it held. She wanted to weep for his ignorance, for it laid bare how very hollow his existence had been; as she wanted to weep for all that had come to pass simply because of it. She recalled with sorrow the solitary youth from her vision, and wondered how different his life might have been had it not been so. Suffering begat suffering, always.

Still Zenos gazed at her, not with the crimson madness of his stolen gift, nor bloodlust, but with the simplest manner of yearning, all too simple for Gisele to comprehend. “They will not suffer me to live, your comrades,” he said, with an unexpected softness.

“I know.”

“Nor should they,” he added. “You bested me in fair combat. Ala Mhigo is liberated from the ceruleum fist of Garlemald. To the victors go the spoils, as it should be, yes?”

Tears, strange and unexpected, began to well in Gisele’s eyes, all of a sudden; she remembered the Song of his soul, echoing within her ears and her heart, as they soared beyond mortal limits during their immense struggle in that place Beyond. 

Zenos yae Galvus was a monster. Of that, there could be no question. He set brother against brother across two lands, and left rivers of blood in his wake. Gisele knew this well, and could not forget. She remembered, too, Y’shtola’s broken body at the Reach—crushed in his callous fury—and Haurchefant tenderly lifting Krile’s diminutive body from that strange Garlean machina. The pain he caused was immeasurable, to Ala Mhigo and Doma, to people Gisele held dear. 

But neither she could not forget the eldritch beauty of that brilliant Song, his aether twined with that of Shinryu in ways he could not have possibly foreseen, even with his stolen gift. How could he have known that Gisele perceived Primal aether in such a way, and his own soul would be laid so bare? That he had one was shock enough; that it bore somewhat other than feral lust for cruelty was yet another. And it sang for her, and she could not bear the thought of it being silenced.

Mayhap there was a man, still, within that monster. Gisele saw him then, gazing within his eyes—neither empty nor hollow, nor filled with violence, but a calm and a serenity she scarce would have imagined in them before she heard that song. He was at peace, perhaps for the first time in his life. How, then, could she countenance his demise? Would that he used that newfound tranquility to redress the balance, as her old beloved did; such a path would be far more difficult to walk than the one to the Resistance firing squad, yet far more rewarding, she believed—and for all.

“I would speak against it,” Gisele said, swallowing down the lump which formed in her throat.

Zenos tilted his head at her curiously, and Gisele almost wanted to laugh, minded as she was of Aymeric’s cat. “And why would you do such a thing?”

“Justice is neither mine to exact, nor deny...but your death would not undo those of the Domans and Ala Mhigans who perished at the hands of your empire. Your life, however, may yet begin to heal the damage you caused. To them...and to yourself,” Gisele said simply.

His eyes narrowed. “I did not believe you nearly so naive, Grey Warden. You drank the blood of your enemies and deposed a queen for standing in the way of your aims. Such is the way of a hunter...not this misplaced mercy.”

“I also once spared a man I hated far more than you, who took from me far more than you have, and all for the greater good. Did your Resonance not show you that, highness?” Gisele smiled wryly at him, and he laughed again.

“It showed me a great many things. And I am not your Loghain Mac Tir,” Zenos said, his full lips curved into a smirk.

“No, Zenos, you most certainly are not. But he once told me that a man is judged by the quality of his enemies,” Gisele replied. 

Zenos nodded, pursing his lips in thought, then idly reached over to lift the disheveled curls which had fallen from the hasty lover’s knot atop Gisele’s head, brushing them behind her shoulder, tucking some few behind her ear. Her breath hitched, despite herself, as his calloused fingers brushed lightly against the point. “What does that say about you and I, I wonder...” he mused thoughtfully. He leveled a penetrating gaze upon her, searching for somewhat in her own. “You refused me once, 'ere we fought. And yet...?”

Gisele shook her head lightly, blinking her eyes hard, against his gaze, and the memory of that song. “You could be more. So much more,” she said softly, breathless with the memory.

Zenos smiled. “We danced beyond the heavens, and in doing so transcended mortality, the limits of mere flesh and blood, Eorzean and Garlean...we each of us strained with power untold coursing through our veins, giving and taking with all that we were…the blood of an eikon spilled forth by your blade and will...my heart beat outside of time, caught within your ichor-stained grasp, and I burned within your aetheric flames. I poured my strength, my lifeblood—entwined with that of a god—upon the stardust. And you took it with such skill, such passion! What could possibly surpass such magnificence, such wonder? What more could I be, my queen of hunters, than divine prey at your feet? What could possibly surpass that?”

Gisele’s body moved seemingly of its own volition in response; again, as in their titanic duel, he challenged her, and she rose to meet it without thinking. She leaned forward, finding Zenos’ full and sensuous lips with her own, without hesitation; they were achingly soft, to her great surprise, and she parted them with her tongue. His katana fell from his grasp, then, and he drew his massive, steel encased arms about her, drawing her into a powerful embrace that threatened to crush her; she wrapped her arms about him, silk against steel, around his neck. His tongue, burning with heat and iron, plunged into Gisele’s mouth, sliding between her teeth, brushing against her tonsils, hitting the back of her throat. Her knees buckled, and she sunk down into his arms.

Encased as he was in Garlean iron, she nonetheless felt him trembling in her arms, at last less mountain than a very mortal man, and they melted into one another, stealing the very breath from each other's lungs, clinging to one another, drowning in each other. And it was no steel Gisele felt pressed hard against the crimson silk of her skirts, through the heat of his leather trousers. She could not help but gasp, when she realized precisely the nature of what it was, the enormity of his desire. He would put a qunari to shame with it, or even a Rogaedyn—and the shiver that shot down her spine at the thought of it enflamed her like little else. 

There were a thousand upon thousand reasons why this was so very senseless; and yet what was Gisele, if not a woman of great passion, for whom the fullest measure and truest fulcrum of power was found not in her keen blade or her prodigious magicks, but in surrender to such passions? What else could she do, but pour them out upon this strange, beautiful creature, so desperate to feel aught but the listless anhedonia of his soul that it fair sung a paean to her, the first one to rouse it from its lifeless slumber.

There were many kinds of healing, of a surety.

And to surrender to this moment, whatever it should be, was the most natural thing on life for one such as Gisele Surana, who loved, and loved, and loved…

As Zenos stripped himself of his armor, Gisele’s eyes never left him, and she marveled to see that while so much of his massive frame was bolstered by its heft, he was still enormous beneath it; his was a largeness of bone rather than flesh, for he was broad-shouldered and lean, his long limbs thick with taut musculature, an adonis carved from stone. Her covetous eyes drank in his beauty without an onze of shame, lingering upon his leather breeches and the enormous bulge she’d felt between his thick thighs, before unbuttoning them with trembling fingers.

And Zenos mirrored her movements in kind, to her astonishment; she would never have believed him capable of such tenderness, and yet his faintly palsied hands were slow and hot against her dark skin, unbuttoning her lacy cravat, freeing her of the crimson brocade of her jacket, exposing the curves of her ample bust to the balmy summer breeze. Hungrily did he bury his face within it, his tongue searing like fire swirling around the large roundness of exposed and dark areola, before releasing the front hook of her brassiere and lavishing worship upon her breasts by turns with a reverent mouth.

“In all these dull and colorless years, you and you alone have been the spark to light them. Never have I felt so alive,” Zenos breathed against her skin, stroking her cheek, her shoulders, his massive hands gliding over her curves. “To think, I believed you mere prey, yet it is I ensnared.”

“I am Lady Gisele Surana des Fortemps et Borel, Crimson Duelist, Flame Captain of the Immortal Flames of Ul’dah, Viscountess of House Borel and Antecedent of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. I am prey for no man—not even you,” Gisele said.

And she sought his luscious mouth once more with her own, parting his lips with an eager tongue; surrendering at last to this forbidden desire was every onze as liberating as their battle, for she gave herself wholly over to it, as much as the magicks which flowed through her then. Zenos pulled away after a long moment, only to lean back to rest upon his haunches, stroking his enormous cock within his meaty fist still clad in fingerless leather, and all rational thought flew from Gisele’s mind, consumed as she was by burning hunger.

“To the victor goes the spoils, my huntress,” he purred, resting his hand at the base of his shaft. “claim your due, as you will.”

Yearning to vanquish her foe yet again, Gisele lowered her head between his powerfully muscled thighs, hovering as a predator above the focus of her desire; her tongue curled, teasing the broad tip of his phallus with light strokes to torment him. The way he quivered beneath her enflamed her like little else, and she yearned to make him cry out.

Zenos hissed, sucking air between grit teeth, before a guttural moan rose up from deep within him, when Gisele’s thick lips pursed about the tip and suckled him, then at last engulfed his stone hard cock. Anyone else would have gagged upon such size, of a surety, but Gisele was far too skilled, far too practiced in such arts; she slid her hands around legs thick as tree trunks to grip his muscled rear, and took him deep into her eager mouth, sucking him down to the back of her throat. And he leaned back, his hand resting atop her wealth of silvery curls, raking them with his fingertips. For a glorious age did Gisele greedily devour him, sliding him in and out of her hot mouth, but though she yearned to taste his pleasure, she was beset by an even more powerful craving, for the cauldron of heat between her thick thighs pulsed with her need.

She rose up pulling away from him, and his eyes were heavy with desire.

“I shall do anything you command, my huntress,” Zenos whispered, his voice shaking even as did his hands. “I am a slave to your will.”

Gisele gingerly bunched up her skirt and eased herself into his lap, placing her hands upon his broad, chiseled pectorals, stroking them before caressing her way down his rippling abdomen, lowering her hands between them, curling her fingers around his hot shaft. 

“Pierce me through, my prey,” she answered, stroking him, grinding slick against his muscled thigh.

Together, they sunk deep into the fragrant blossoms; and he was so beautiful, beautiful enough to make her heart ache as he sprawled back upon the grass, his long locks of honeyed gold sprayed about him. And his lustful eyes were alight with wonder as he eased her short skirt above the sheathed himself within her to the very hilt, before rolling back into his head. Gisele gasped, shuddering against the strain of his girth, but it was an exquisite manner of ache, and only fed her insatiable hunger. And when his powerful hands settled upon her voluptuous hips, she rolled them within his grip, and began to grind against him in a slow, languorous pace, riding his behemoth cock in hedonistic bliss. She reached down to grasp his broad shoulder, arching her lower back in just the angle that her swollen pearl rubbed against him each time he thrust up into her. Again and again she rolled her hips against him, her senses blooming with unspeakable pleasure; and then she bent low to part his moaning lips with her tongue, suckling his own, catching his thick lower lip between her teeth.

“Mount me,” she hissed sharply, and eased off him; he grinned rather luridly and did as commanded, rolling and spinning up onto his knees in a single smooth motion, shifting his enormous body behind her. Gisele bit her lip as she felt his hands spreading her thick cheeks, and moaned when the slick tip parted and teased her folds. She gasped, shuddering in pleasure as he sheathed himself within her once more, and from behind. He resumed that deliciously torturous pace at first, thrusting slow and hard, but then his hands slid to grip her by the thickness of her thighs, and he slammed his gargantuan cock into her again and again, and it was all Gisele could do to bury her face in her arms against the blossoms, clamping her eyes shut to lose herself in delirious pleasure and pain by turns, gasping for the scent of violets mingled with sweat.

Zenos rode her without mercy, his powerful thigh muscles slapping a staccato rhythm against her shapely rear with each of his strokes, and his hand curved about her own inner thigh, a thick finger parting her slick, throbbing hood to rub her swollen pearl even as he pounded her senseless. Gisele could but clamp her eyes shut, to lose herself in delirious pleasure as he ravished her. At some point her knees had given out, and he was sprawled upon her back, smothering her comparatively slender flame with the heaviness of his weight; still, grunting as he curved his groin into her, pumping her fast and hard in time to the strokes of his fingers pressing firm circles against her clit. Just as he had in battle, Zenos pushed her supple flesh to its very limits, and she surrendered to it, taking him with all she was, her insatiable desire fed by the bottomless depths of his dark passions.

And Gisele cried out, her fingers curled about violet blossoms as an explosion of stars danced before her shrouded eyes, her body shuddering hard with the force of the wave. Not a heartbeat later did Zenos’ teeth clamp down hard upon on her shoulder and the length and breadth of his heavy body grew rigid upon her; groaned long and hard into her shoulder in hot gasping breaths against her skin, and she felt a searing, veritable torrent shoot inside her as he came.

For a long moment they lay as such, panting upon the flowers, utterly spent and listless from tandem exertion. Gisele luxuriated in the most pleasant manner of ache, sore and sated.

But it was the distant sounds of battle still raging far in the city below that at last shook her from her dreamy reverie, with shouts and steel ringing against steel, Garlean fire cracking through the air. And she remembered where she was: Ala Mhigo, and in the arms of the man who kept it beneath his heel, even as the dead weight of his body smothered her still in the aftermath of stolen pleasures.

For a long and precious moment had they dreamed, the Crown Prince of Garlemald and the Warrior of Light; but now it was time to wake. Such beauty they shared was, mayhap, doomed to be forever ethereal; but, come what may, they had this. And it, too, was beautiful for its ephemeral nature, as Gisele had come to be reminded in Doma, in the arms of another samurai prince.

“Thank you,” Zenos whispered in her pointed ear, before planting a single tender kiss upon it, and rolling off her back.

Gisele watched in silence as he strapped his armor back into place, piece by piece, with the quick and practiced hand of one who virtually lived in it. She aided him where she could, but could not help feeling as through she were preparing him for the pyre, and could not bring herself to look upon him as she retrieved her discarded smallclothes, and restored herself to decency.

A gust of wind carried upon the air, bringing with it smoke and the traces of aether most familiar to her heightened senses. Swallowing hard, Gisele turned her back upon him, then, deliberately placing one boot in front of the other, willing herself some distance from him. She needed some manner of physical space between them, to regain some measure of clarity; and she did not wish to arouse any manner of suspicion among her friends.

Then, Lyse and Alphinaud came flying in from the palace.

“Gisele, are you alright?” Lyse asked, her eyes a bit wild.

Gisele nodded in silence; she could not bring herself to speak, not when she still ached from the strain of him.

Some few words were exchanged between these hated foes; Gisele could not recall them, even years later, for the fog of dread that gripped her had dulled her senses, still so enflamed by the scent of him which clung to her.

And then Zenos yae Galvus turned his gaze to her for the last time, his gleaming eyes as soft and serene as the smile upon his lips.

“Farewell, my first and only friend…my enemy…my love.”

Gisele’s eyes grew wide with sudden terror, at the realization of what he meant; time itself seem to slow once more, as he brought the edge of his blade, bright and sharp, to the prone throat she had kissed mere moments before.

“ _Zenos, no!_ ” she screamed, reaching for him even as did Lyse; though for reasons entirely different.

But she was late; too late, no match for his speed; mayhap if she had remained at his side, rather than turning from him, she would have been close enough—quick enough—to stop him.

She was not. Gisele charged forward, propelled by desperation and aether by turns, even as did Lyse in tandem; but they both were a half step too late. She could only avert her eyes, in the end; Lyse reached for him in vain, carried upon the wind with the righteous fury of Rhalgr and a generation entire of Ala Mhigans, but in the end, neither she nor they could best the will or the near preternatural speed of their greatest enemy. And Gisele heard the razor sharp blade slice through his flesh, guided by the prodigious strength of his own hand.

The blade fell from his grasp. And Zenos yae Galvus fell once more; not as a shooting star, thus, but as a lifeless stone, enshrined amidst the fragrant blooms, his golden hair spread across his beautiful face.

Gisele collapsed with him, in a singular moment of perfect despair.

So drowned was she in it that she did not mark the approaching footsteps of Raubahn and Hien—and she did not deserve the kindness with which her Doman prince treated her, taking her into his strong arms, even as she had lain with his father’s murderer mere moments before; oh but the loathing which washed over her as he drew her into his embrace, whispering soothing endearments. She clung to him selfishly nonetheless, even as her mind reeled from the enormity of what she had done, and just how deeply she had betrayed him.

Never before had Gisele cursed her nature as she had then, not even when she realized she had fallen in love with Loghain.

“It is over now, love,” Hien said softly, and Gisele wished to carve out her own heart at his tenderness.

“I know,” was all she could say, hoarse and filled with regrets beyond counting.

“Why on earth do you weep, Gisele?” Alphinaud gasped in startled shock. “He was a monster!”

Gisele raised her tear-stained face from Hien’s shoulder, to gaze up upon her incredulous friend. Hien aided her to her feet, and it was with a tremendous pang that she drew strength from his steady presence.

“I wept for Urthemiel, the Archdemon who took my life. As I wept for Nidhogg, who nearly stole my love from me. Why should I not weep for Zenos yae Galvus, whose soul sang for me?” Gisele asked softly, raising the hem of her sleeves to her eyes, smearing the fine crimson brocade with tears blackened by kohl and crushed violets, before walking away in silence. 


End file.
